Looking Back at 2011 | A Year Through Books

It’s that time of year again folks, a fresh new year. We’ll all be setting ourselves fresh new reading challenges, so it’s the perfect moment to look back at 2011 and see what we have accomplished and how we can further improve on our performances. I see that throughout the year I’ve discovered how some of heavyweights like ’Beowulf’ are not all what they are cut out to be. Yet a penny dreadful like ‘Sweeney Todd’ can turn out to be a surprisingly solid five-star read!

A way to do this is to looks at goodreads.com’s ’2011 Reading Challenge’. Being a slow reader, my personal record has never gone past more than 50 books, yet I was determined to do better. And I did, I managed to read 72 books. I’m thrilled! For 2012 I’n trying a tentative 70!

Here’s my selective reading journey for 2011:

5 Star Reads

White Oleander – Janet Fitch
The Snow Goose – Paul Gallico
Man in the Dark – Paul Auster
Peter Pan – JM Barrie
Beginners – Raymond Carver
The Cellist of Sarajevo – Steven Galloway
Marvels – Kurt Busiek
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society – Mary Ann Schaffer
The English Patient – Michael Ondaatje
Slaughterhouse 5 – Kurt Vonnegut
The Legend of the Sleey Hollow – Washington Irving
The Tales of Bejamin Bunny – Beatrix Potter
The Tale of Peter Rabbit – Beatrix Potter
Labyrinths – JL Borges
A House of Pomegranates – Oscar Wilde
Black Beauty - Anna Sewell
Sweeney Todd – Anonymous
Beloved – Toni Morrison
Venus in Furs – Leopold von Sacher-Masoch

4 Star Reads

Prisoner of Zenda – Anthony Hope
The Angel’s Game – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
Nazi Literature in the Americas – Roberto Bolano
Siddhartha – Hermann Hesse
2BR02B – Kurt Vonnegut
The Yellow Wallpaper – Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Cat’s Cradle – Kurt Vonnegut
The Year of the Flood – Margaret Atwood
Giovanni’s Room – James Baldwin
The Doll Short Stories – Daphne du Maurier
The Godfather – Mario Puzo
Aesop’s Fables – Aesop

3 Star Reads

Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
Octopussy and the Living Daylights – Ian Fleming
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich – A. Solzhenitsyn
Kung Fu Trip – Benjamin Zephaniah
The Reluctant Fundamentalist – Mohsin Hamid
The Informers – Brett Easton Ellis
Point Omega – Don DeLillo
Wolverine: Origins – Paul Jenkins
The Spy Who Loved Me – Ian Fleming
The Summer Without Men – Siri Hustvedt
Dune – Frank Herbert
First Love, Last Rites – Ian McEwan
Dr. Faustus – Christopher Marlowe
Japanese Fairy Tales – Theodora Yei Ozaki
English Fairy Tales – Joseph Jacobs
Grimms Fairy Tales – Brothers Grimm
Beowulf – Anonymous
The Diary of a Nobody – George Grossmith

2 Star Reads

Tales of Freedom – Ben Okri
Amsterdam – Ian McEwan
Civil War – Mark Millar
Florence and Giles – John Harding

1 Star Reads

Lost World – Patricia Melo
The Lady and the Little Fox Fur – Violette LeDuc
Lost Souls – Poppy Z Brite

So, how was your reading year? I hope you had an interesting one, and good luck for all the 2012 challenges.

Book Review | ‘Man in the Dark’ by Paul Auster

Man in the Dark by Paul Auster

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

“Escaping into a film is not like escaping into a book. Books force you to give something back to them, to exercise your intelligence and imagination, where as you can watch a film-and even enjoy it-in a state of mindless passivity.”

It is my opinion that Paul Auster gets better with age. Whether that’s his age or mine I’ve not quite decided, but I’m finding him a lot more agreeable the older I get. I first met him in the acclaimed ‘The New York Trilogy’; a book a fiercely wished I could like, but found I couldn’t because of all the disjointedness and the loose ends of plot he kept leaving artfully around for my poor brain to trip up on.

Anyway, the long and short of it is, I could smell a good thing was there and that my brain needed a bit more ripening, so I made a mental note to come back to Auster. Good job I did as well. After ‘The New York Trilogy’ I did what I normally do with fiction/ fiction writers I find hard to get into: try out a shorter work instead. So I indulged in ‘Travels in the Scriptorium’ (excellent!) and now ‘Man in the Dark’, which I find electrifying.

One thing to remember is, when writing fiction, Auster can’t help but write ABOUT fiction as well. This must be a theme he loves returning to because both ‘Travels in the Scriptorium’ and ‘Man in the Dark’ have elements of ‘when fiction invades life’.

There is a decidedly Borgian element to ‘Man in the Dark’, mainly because like Borges’ works, it is a small narrative that harbours the seeds of a much larger one within it. There is a ‘story within a story’ thing happening here, parallel worlds that threaten to break through the thin membrane separating reality and imagination.

August Brill is an elderly man who is recovering from a car accident. He also suffers from severe insomnia, which compels him to make up stories to pass the time. One character, Owen Brick, becomes a fictional alter ego of sorts, and the world he occupies an eerie place where history is re-written to create an alternative history. In the world of Owen, America is a battleground as civil war ensues as fellow citizens kill each other relentlessly. The chapters alternate between Brill and Brick quite seamlessly and there is an overarching ‘emptiness’ that unites or rather binds Brill and Brick. For Brill it is the void left behind by the passing of his wife and his own general loneliness as an elderly man. For Brick, it is the frightening fear of waking up from a coma and not knowing where the hell you are, who you are and more importantly what you are doing there.

For those finding Auster difficult I highly recommend this short novel. If any of the themes in this review interest you then ‘Travels in the Scriptorium’ by the same author or ‘Point Omega’ by Don Delillo are equally as good (and short!)

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Book Review | ‘The Diary of a Nobody’ by George Grossmith

The Diary of a Nobody by George Grossmith

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Meet Mr. Charles Pooter, perfectly average in every way. Actually, he doesn’t really like being average as he does have his snobbish moments, but he certainly isn’t a ‘nobody’ either. He is rather just one of us, a person trying to get ahead in life and be as successful as he can be in the face of life’s little embarrassing disasters. And believe you me there are plenty of those in this book!

This is his diary, wherein he faithfully records all of the aforementioned moments as well as the stress of moving into a new house. British comedy is famous for its sarcasm and dry wit, and ‘The Diary of a Nobody’ has this in spades as it was written by George Grossmith, a rather famous comedian of his time. The humour here is of the domestic variety, and includes sharp observations of moments between long-married couples like the Pooters whose spats are not funny at the time of happening but become so in retrospect.

All families have their dysfunctional side, and the Pooter ’black sheep’ is none other than Lupin, the son – a young, cad about town with a bad work ethic and a penchant for making money fast through dubious means. Like most fathers, Charles Pooter is seriously concerned for the boy as he can’t seem to hold down a job and has taken to slang and the courting of chorus girls. Attached to the Pooter household are the maids and two longstanding friends Cummings and Gowing, who arrive whenever they want and always manage to finish off Mr. Pooter’s spirits.

The problem with Pooter, (or rather the sad part of it) is that he is an intelligent man, but for some reason is never entirely taken seriously by his friends or even his wife and son. Everyone is making jokes at his expense and his own jokes aren’t all that good. He is rather a sensitive character, and comes across as a bit of a pushover. In fact, this character does remind me a little of Kenneth Williams of ‘Carry On’ fame thrown in with a large helping of John Cleese.

All in all rather funny in a quaint way. Despite being written in the late 1800′s, it is very easy to read and relate to. I feel sorry for Mr. Pooter! I swear I know someone like this in real life…

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Book Review | ‘Beowulf’ by Anonymous

Beowulf by Unknown

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

“Beloved Beowulf, remember how you boasted,
 Once, that nothing in the world would ever
 Destroy your fame; fight to keep it,
 Now, be strong and brave, my noble
 King, protecting life and fame
                                       Together. My sword will fight at your side!”

Stirring stuff eh? Nothing but distilled epicness! When someone used to say ‘Beowulf’ to me I’d start thinking about epic soundtracks to films, especially ‘Lux Aeterna’. But not anymore…

No, there’s nothing to get excited about here, people. In fact, this might be my shortest review of a book yet. Basically ‘Beowulf’ is the story of a warrior called Beowulf (who comes across as a bit vainglorious, hence the quote above about him boasting!) and his epic battle with Grendel the monster, and said monsters mum. And you get to read the story TWICE. Once by the narrator, and a second time round by Beowulf himself (who was only trying to impress the ladies in court!)

My translated version was the Gutenberg e-book edition, and very unimaginative if I might say so. Ask around for a GOOD translation before you give it a go. If you know a good version, please let me know. I feel like a s*&% not diggin’ this piece of epic lit. And I don’t like that. It makes me feel dumb.

So please, convince me through another version this CAN be better and I’ll be a very grateful girl indeed!

To read my version of the text free, plesase visit ‘Beowulf’ at the Gutenberg Project.

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Book Review | ‘Beloved’ by Toni Morrison

Beloved by Toni Morrison

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

“In trying to make the slave experience intimate, I hoped the sense of things being both under control and out of control would be persuasive throughout; that the order and quietude of every day life would be violently disrupted by the chaos of the needy dead; that the herculean effort to forget would be threatened by memory desperate to stay alive. To render enslavement as a personal experience, language must first get out of the way.”

This is Morrison describing why and how she went about writing ‘Beloved’. When I first came to read the novel, I noticed a very uncomfortable gap, or rather ‘jarring’ between what Morrison was trying to say and what she ended up saying. Nothing was straight forward, even the first opening sentence felt as if it had been dragged out backwards from the psyche. The ‘slave experience’ that she mentions, and the claustrophobic memory of the dead that continually pervades the living is the catalyst Morrison uses to break down the hindering effect of language.

As a novel of extremities, ‘Beloved’ explores the limitless depths of love and hate, showing the places where they intermingle and become almost interchangeable. This is much more than just a ghost story, much more than the angry, persistent haunting of a mother who loved her baby so much, she had to choose between the better of two evils. The haunting is one that clings to the skirts of an entire race. I have often heard people say how disconcerting Morrison’s prose is apt to be, and how many have turned away from this fine novel with confusion, misunderstanding or even sheer disgust. I implore that they look again, for their own good.

Personally, after much wrestling with the novel, I have found that this disjointedness provides the perfect rhythm to a story about a people whose hearts are scarred by the unspeakable. This is not just about slavery, the evils of that practice nor how people escaped. It’s about what happens after; how a person goes about mourning for ones own wasted life, but also for those that came before them and those that might come after.

“There is a loneliness that can be rocked. Arms crossed, knees drawn up, holding, holding on, this motion, unlike a ship’s, smooths and contains the rocker. It’s an inside kind–wrapped tight like skin. Then there is the loneliness that roams. No rocking can hold it down. It is alive. On its own. A dry and spreading thing that makes the sound of one’s own feet going seem to come from a far-off place.”

Because it is only after, when fate or a change in ones’ circumstance allows a moment of reflection, that the sting of the whip begins to reverberate in the soul.

“Freeing yourself was one thing, claiming ownership of that freed self was another.”

Every character in this novel has their own tragedies. Even though Sethe is the main character and her infanticide the focal point on the novel, there are other more gruesome events. I can sympathise with Sethe, because Morrison boldly takes the reader down a very dark path to her particular reasoning. It is not something I could personally achieve on my own, but thanks to characters like Ella and Baby Suggs, I felt I could access the delirious logic of a woman on the edge of reason.

“She is a friend of my mind. She gather me, man. The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order.”

This is not an easy book, it is hard to read and harder to understand. It works on many levels and tackles a lot of very thorny issues. Not for the faint-hearted nor the narrow-minded. It’s a mental workout which leaves you drained at the end. I’ll not be re-reading it for a while, because I feel this one will be staying in my mind for a long time. However I am glad I read it, because no literary work I have read thus far has ever looked at slavery as boldly as ‘Beloved’.

If you like your novels to have a bold streak in them, then ‘Beloved’ is for you.

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Book Review | ‘The House of Pomegranates’ by Oscar Wilde

A House of Pomegranates by Oscar Wilde

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

“Life is one fool thing after another whereas love is two fool things after each other.”    

Oscar Wilde might just be the greatest fiction writer of all time. Having said that, it’s a pity there are so few of his works. He certainly has a very special place in my heart, and this collection of beautiful children’s stories show just how talented he really was. Wilde is famous for his ‘epigrams’ and his razor-sharp wit. His command of the English language made him a literary trend-setter. Yet these innocent fables allow people to see a lesser-known side of him, a more human side; a glimpse of the ‘mortal’.

As mercurial and glamorous as he was (or made himself out to be), the work he produced here for younger audiences stands as a homage for ancient story-telling that reaches out to the likes of Hans Christian Anderson or the Brother’s Grimm. In fact these aren’t mere stories, but rather ‘fables’, and unfortunately fables are an almost extinct form of story-telling these days. When people think of Oscar Wilde, no one ever thinks of morals, yet these tales each hold a deep moral lesson.

The ‘Star Child’ is rather like ‘Dorian Gray’ re-worked for children, in that it warns them of the dangers of vanity and to respect ones’ elders. The ‘Mermaids Soul’ explores the rather complex issue of the soul, or rather the difference of making decisions with your head or your senses, and how one must have a little of both facilities in, otherwise chaos ensues. The most famous of this bunch is probably ‘The Happy Prince’, who when I first read it many moons ago mistook it for an Andersen fable.

My favourite, ‘The Infanta’, is about innocent ignorance, class-divide, love and mercy. It teaches us NOT to judge by appearances, and to accept people as they are. Wilde was famed as an aesthete, yet in all his stories there is a very firm dislike of artifice, and a reverence of the beauty of the soul as opposed to the flesh. Even though this is blatantly obvious in his writing, people still insist on ignoring it, which is sad. Judging by these stories (and stories are a window to the soul) I think Wilde was a deeply moral man whose choices in life must have pained him given the social/ cultural atmosphere of the time.

This collection would make a wonderful gift for any child. I read the Gutenberg e-book version, which unfortunately didn’t have the titles, but rather interestingly had a dedication at the beginning of each story telling the reader who it was written for. I think ‘The House of Pomegranates’ is a real gem of a book. I’m glad I rediscovered it this year. It is absolute story perfection.

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Book Review | ‘Florence and Giles’ by John Harding

Florence and Giles by John Harding

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This was my Hallowe’en read for the year, and I did get rather excited at the prospect of a ‘Poe’ meets ‘The Turn of the Screw’, but it really wasn’t to be. While the concept is firmly rooted in the Gothic tradition (thanks to it being almost a re-write of the illustrious, aforementioned title by Henry James) it really does lack in the ‘scare factor’ that it so promises on the back cover.

This is the story of Florence and Giles, two orphaned children living with their estranged uncle in a vast, sprawling estate known as Blithe House. However, the name of the house is grossly misleading as nothing about the place is ‘blithe’. It is a cold, forbidding mansion with ancient turrets and a dark history. Florence is our precocious little narrator, and guides us through the ghostly happenings of the place and the strange people who live there.

Besides her quiet, rather innocent brother (who needs protecting most of the time) there is her uncle, a pedantic odd sort of man who much to Florence’s annoyance, forbids her to read. Despite her uncle’s stern request Florence does read and her midnight sojourns to the crumbling library were the most enjoyable parts of the book. A bit of a childhood fantasy come true for me! Another endearing aspect to Florence’s personality is her affection for Shakespeare, which she admires so much that she adopts his ‘word-forgery’. As a result she develops her own take on English, splicing words together to make them seem more dramatic. In some aspects she is uncannily like her uncle, and as the novel progresses is further strengthened to suggest a far closer blood-bond.

However when it comes to the accidental death of the old governess, and the appointment of the new one, I find things get a bit tedious. I could clearly see that the new governess was supposed to be a very scary witch-like character, possibly even a revenant, and Harding almost DID pull it off in a particularly hair-raising sequence, but it was never followed up after that.

Instead there is a ‘twist’, in that we realise that our narrator may not be as reliable as we first thought. For me, the turn of events served to kill the story rather than improve it.

It is a good novel for gothic fiction fans, but those looking fora bit more ‘oomph’ needn’t bother. If you want something like Poe, read Poe. There are really no substitutes for them in my opinion, but having said that I do commend Harding for having a go at it.

If you are interested in Edgar Allen Poe, please read my review on Poe: A Life Cut Short by Peter Ackroyd.

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Book Review | ‘First Love, Last Rites’ by Ian McEwan

First Love, Last Rites by Ian McEwan

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

“Oh my. Ian McEwan, you are a sick @&%*! But bloody hell can you write…”

This was my first response to these lean, mean sickening stories of ennui, sexual perversity and emotional absence. McEwan manages to abridge the two opposing poles of sexuality and mortality in these scary little urban tales. Besides this over-arching theme McEwan seems to write each story from the perspective of the perpetrator rather than the victim – something I never actually got comfortable with considering all his protagonists are murderers, incestuous rapists, pimpish theatre directors and paedophiles.

What I suppose I liked about these stories was how McEwan took a day out of an ordinary person’s life, and showed us how quickly it could be degraded, how by degrees an average person could manage to commit an ‘accidental’ crime, sometimes through idle suggestion alone. There is a very precise psychology around these stories and I’m pretty sure anyone who has followed the news over the past 10 years can name at least ONE incident that bears an incredible resemblance to one of the fictions within this slim book.

The taboo subjects in this novel are the things that we tend to shudder and condemn within our circle of family and friends. These are things that we would never dare identify with because it’s outside ‘normal’ accepted social behaviour. The acts themselves are the type that once committed, puts one on a ‘road of no return’. They are acts of self-condemnation and moral ruin, and I sense it is McEwan’s intent to make us feel how close we really are to becoming such monsters. After all, no one is born a rapist or a murderer, and something has to happen to make them that way. And sometimes that something can be a subtle domestic happening that grows to sinister proportions until it finds an awful outlet.

The narrative itself is written in a deceptively straight-forward and often jolly manner which means we instantly fall into the habit of identifying with the narrator. And as readers that is what is expected of us. However, the trap is laid, and when things start getting nasty I personally found I couldn’t ‘disassociate’ myself with the protagonist as I wanted to, and ended up being given a pay-off of disgust and distress.

I have often found McEwan’s writing to be like a ‘small quake’, the events he writes about have a quiet devastation to them. They live long within you like a seismic echo. One of his most loved novels ‘Atonement’ is a classic example of this which makes ‘First Love, Love Rites’ little miniature versions of such calamities.

The stories that stood out the most were ‘Solid Geometry’ and ‘Conversations With a Cupboard Man’. The former is a borderline gothic tale of spousal enmity and the occult of mathematics. The latter deals with the turbulent past of a retarded man, and looks at the horrific psychological damage done to people who do not receive proper social care.

Despite my glowing review I gave this book 3/5 stars because I have read better by McEwan and hope to discover more novels of the caliber of ‘Atonement’.

If you like Ian McEwan then please visit my review of ‘Amsterdam’.  

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The Problem with Gargantuan Book Challenges, and How I Handle Them…

As Hallowe’en approaches I tend to look back on my reading record to see how well I’ve done throughout the year. Although I am heading nicely towards my target of 60 books, I was not pleased to discover that I had grossly deviated from my other book challenges, especially the most important one: 1001 Book Challenge.

It’s not an easy list to conquer, as anyone who is currently undertaking it will know. The sheer number of books aside, it is probably the only list that well and truly makes you ‘feel’ your mortality. Especially if you have (like me) gauged their yearly reading speed. Mine stands at approximately 50 books a year, placing me in the ‘slow reader’ category compared to some readers who manage well over 100 books a year!

One good thing about gargantuan challenges like the 1001 Book List is that many people are attempting it. It’s tough but it’s highly popular and if you can find a good online reading group (I’m a member of the goodreads one) there is plenty of camaraderie to be had along the way. And you’ll soon discover that most people are there to discover truly good books that deserve their time and effort. There is no pressure to actually COMPLETE the list. In reality, it would take a lifetime of reading. So the challenge is viewed as one that allows you to read a lifetime of ‘quality’ titles that have been tried and tested by critics.

Joining a group also means you’ll meet many people who have varying reading habits, some quite surprising. Some people begin to read the books in list order, finding a sort of rhythm as they tick off the books one by one. Some like me, tend to pick and choose haphazardly whereas others read books in ‘author’ order, e.g. reading all titles that happen to be in the list by Dickens, then go onto another author and so on. If you can’t be bothered to choose a book from the list yourself (and there are plenty of lists floating around in all formats) or you rather can’t bear to look at that heart-stopping list for fear of fainting then there is always the monthly readalongs that let you know which books are being read by the whole group. This is best by those who like to enter into heated debates. I like a good discussion every once in a while, but it’s rare that I choose to do a readalong, mainly because as soon as I commit something is bound to come up and stop me from joining in!

Now this year has been very up and down for me reading wise and with all good intentions I have not had the chance to make the best use of my time. I also believe that because I have 3 different 1001 lists (2006, 2008 and 2010), I have put myself off a bit. Just a tad. So I sort of gave up on it. But I won’t let that happen for 2012. Oh no, I’ve decided to make a shortlist of 1001 books that I have been DYING to get my hands on. My list is a mish-mash of titles taken from all three versions which makes things a bit more manageable.

Here’s what my proposed 1001 Book Challenge for the coming year looks like:

Pre 1700′s
*Don Quixote (Own)
*Oroonoko (Own)
*Tale of Genji
*Aesop’s Fable
*Metamorphoses

1700′s
*Rasselas (Own)
*120 Days of Sodom
*Caleb Williams
*Camilla
*Wilhelm Maisters Apprenticeship

1800′s
*La Bete Humaine
*Germinal
*Bel-Ami
*Against Nature
*Nana
*Erewhon
*The Moonstone (Own)
*Crime and Punishment (Own)
*Woman in White (Own)
*The Red and the Black
*The Brothers Karamazov
*Tale of Two Cities (Own)

1900′s
*Locus Solus
*Rashomon
*The Great Gatsby (Own)
*The the Lighthouse (Own)
*Steppenwolf
*Lady Chatterley’s Lover
*Les Enfants Terribles
*Tender is the Night (Own)
*Nausea
*The Little Prince
*Zorba the Greek
*Love in a Cold Climate
*Go Tell it to the Mountain
*Casino Royale
*Bonjour Tristesse
*The Mandarins
*The Talented Mr. Ripley
*Pale Fire
*Ada
*Heartbreak Tango
*The House of Spirits (Own)
*If not now, When?
*Beloved
*The Black Dahlia
*Kitchen
*Buddha of Suburbia (Own)
*The Virgin Suicides
*A Suitable Boy
*The Poisonwood Bible

2000′s
*Kafka on the Shore
*Suite Francaise
*Elegance of the Hedgehog
*The Children’s Book
*On Beauty
*After the Quake

There are a total of 58 books, which means it is well within my means to conquer such a list. Obviously I hope to read more than that, as each year I try to stretch myself beyond the 50 mark. This year I’m trying for 60 books, of which I have read 47 so far. I know it’s a bit early to be making New Year’s Resolutions, but I’m really determined to take a big chunk out of that 1001 list. There are so many important books on there that I just have to make the knowledge of them ‘mine’! But considering that the list is updated every two years, I won’t be making much of a dent in it really.

So, enough of my list mania, what about yours? How do you handle your Book challenges? Is there a particular order, pattern to how you pick your next read? I don’t care how wacky it is, I would love to know.

Book Review | ‘Lost Souls’ by Poppy Z. Brite

Lost Souls by Poppy Z. Brite

My rating: 1 of 5 stars

I think I’m 13 years too late for this novel. Looking back, it’s one of the ones that ‘got away’, fell off my book-dar when I was a moody, goth-chick with raging hormones and a healthy, morbid curiosity. Back in the days I liked my books dark, with seductive, raven-haired vampires. ‘Lost Souls’ would have been perfect for me then. But not anymore. I am happy to report that my reading preferences have changed dramatically, that I have outgrown the dark phase of ‘nobody understands me’ *mope-mope*. And thank god I did.

Because despite it being hailed as a ‘cult vampire classic’, the plot was completely lost on me. In fact, I think there isn’t really a plot at all. ‘Lost Souls’ is a story with a handful of characters whose paths collide with one another on a random basis. A bit like a car crash, or a hit-and-run accident. Reading this was a bit like me looking back through the years at my pre-pubescent self, and wondering how I ever evolved into the person I am now. Even though I read lots of novels like this back in the day, I discovered I could no longer relate to them. It felt like a very specific window to my previous ‘self’ was forever lost to me. And that’s a bit saddening, because it not only makes you feel old, but also (somehow) narrow-minded as well.

The novel hinges on events based in New Orleans and one Mardi Gras night a young girl strolls into a bar looking for ‘the vampires’. The bartender (one 400 year old vampire by the name of Christian *snickers*) tries to discourage said girl, but suddenly in barge three vamps (nasty ones) who immediately order bottles and bottles of Chartreuse (they drink copious amounts of the stuff throughout the novel) and begin mucking around. Girl sees vampires, goes over to them, offers herself up to pretty blonde vampire. Christian uncharacteristically again tries to do the decent thing but in the end gets seduced by the pretty blonde vampire too. In the end, despite all good intentions, all five end up have a massive orgy anyway…

Had enough yet? No, wait there’s more. The three bad vampires sling their hook as soon as the dirty deed is over and the girl later finds out she is pregnant. Great eh? No, not really. Because the stupid girl is going to die. All mothers of vampires apparently die during childbirth. Christian takes pity upon her and agrees to help her until she gives birth. However Christian doesn’t really know what to do with a screaming baby boy, so he names it ‘Nothing’ and leaves it outside a house hoping some humans can take care of it instead.

Everything up until that point actually makes sense, believe it or not. There is something taking shape and I was made to believe it would actually go somewhere. But it didn’t. Instead the plot becomes a muddy pool of mindless drugs, sex, gore, incest and road trips. Endless road trips. Everybody apparently is going ‘somewhere’ but no one ever reaches it. And all these characters meet up at some point or another on the road or when they are hitch-hiking.

Now in all honesty, I couldn’t even bring myself to finish this one. It was dull and boring. Credibility is an important factor of story-telling, even if it’s a supernatural/ fantasy novel, it has to make sense to the reader. There were moments when I believed Brite really didn’t know where her narrative was going. The novel reads like a glorified, teenage vampire fan fiction, which are mostly written purely for personal gratification with little regard for the readers’ needs. True, it has it’s moments. For instance there is some real elegance in her landscape descriptions, but it seems she had an obsession with Chartreuse, as it’s all the characters ever drink, and a fondness for making nearly all her characters sexually ambiguous.

For those who like their YA vampire fiction to be LGBT and over-the-top in the sex department, then you must read this. Unfortunately incestuous vampires are not my thing. But, if you are well over twenty and thinking about re-visiting some of the crazier books you read as a teenager (and this was one of them) then, not so great. Avoid like the plague. Or better, go get you some Anne Rice. She does it so much better.

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